Sorry I Worried You

Pharisees

165 Pharisees Jim Grayson taught good and evil. He had his students research the Catholic hierarchies to learn what the saints and the devils accounted for in this world that was going to hell now or even sooner. Once upon a time, he explained to his classes, the saints managed our bodies. St. Blaise commanded the throat. St. Lucy was in charge of the eyes. “And St. Erasmus?” he asked them. And when every hand in his room stayed down, he said triumphantly, “The guts.” Jim Grayson passed out pictures of all those saints in September. Whoever fell into your hands was who you reported on. A thousand words. With footnotes and a bibliography. Investigate, he said. Proceed . When anyone complained because this was a public school, he said his class was World Cultures. Isn’t Christianity important? 166 When somebody said he was teaching Catholicism, Grayson said he always mentioned the other religions by way of comparison. “I could give them the Greeks and the Romans,” Grayson said, “but that would be a waste. You don’t need to know them; you just remember the names so the allusions come to you.” “We start with the saints,” Grayson told me during my first month on the job, “because belief and values are the beginning of everything . And we do the devils because they follow the saints like dogs.” He paused, waiting, I imagined, for whatever sign I would give that signaled disapproval. “And then we move on,” he added. “We do politics and art. We do the myths.” And they did, even opening, from time to time, the textbook approved by the school board. But what made those saints and devils part of history’s curriculum was that Jim Grayson got results, every last one of his students for the first five years he’d taught in that room passing the January and June statemandated standardized tests. If he pulled off that feat this year, Grayson would have nearly a thousand students take those tests without failing. I knew all this because the principal had told me, my first day, that the only thing he hoped for me as a teacher of American history was that being close to Jim Grayson would rub some of his test-results magic off on me. In October, Jim Grayson concentrated on the devils. Beelzebub, who took advantage of our pride; Astaroth, who preyed on sloth. Those were the only two I’d ever heard of before Grayson handed me a copy of his instructions for the next thousand-word report. Gressil. Asmodeus. Verrine. He had them in some sort of order. I couldn’t even remember the one that was supposed to be inside Regan in The Exorcist. I thought one of those names might set me off to giving it credit for the head-turning and the crucifix masturbation , but if Grayson mentioned it, I didn’t recognize the evil. 167 Hardly anyone complained. I found out fast enough that it was the fundamentalists who sent anonymous letters to the superintendent of schools because a book contained the word damn or suggested sex could be something you did for fun. As soon as I Xeroxed a story to supplement my “American Culture ” unit, I had a problem with a parent because of the word prostitute , not to mention whore. Jim Grayson thought I should pay more attention to the stories I chose. “Preview,” he said. “It’s the only way to beat the devil.” I wanted to tell him I’d read that story in high school, but instead I said, “I thought there was a whole platoon of devils I have to beat.” “You have help,” he said. “You have Muriel.” For a moment I thought he was confusing me with another teacher who’d tossed skepticism his way. Somebody with a wife named Muriel. Somebody old because I hadn’t met anyone under the age of seventy with that name. “Your birthday’s July ninth, isn’t it?” he asked. I nodded. Here was coincidence, the soon-to-be-retiree on our staff with the same date of birth as mine. “Everyone has an angel assigned to them on the day they’re born. Yours is Muriel.” Grayson kept the straightest face I could imagine this side of the grave. And then, I’ll admit, I thought, As long as this guy teaches here I’ll never...